Wolf portrayal in film not based in reality

Fleeting images from the official trailer for the new Hollywood film The Grey suggest a love story, a violent plane crash, then a flash of bristling fur, the glint of a knife blade, and, in the background, the sound of a haunting howl.

Opening in theatres this weekend, The Grey is described as the story of an “unruly group of oil-rig roughnecks” whose plane crashes in the remote Alaskan wilderness. Amid a mountain backdrop – in reality, Whistler and Smithers, B.C. – the cast, headlined by Liam Neeson, must battle mortal injuries, merciless weather and, most menacing of all, “a vicious pack of rogue wolves on the hunt.”

Before you settle in with a tub of buttery popcorn, take note that wolf experts are giving the reality factor of the production a unanimous thumbs-down.

Paul Paquet, a senior scientist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, says such a film serves to feed into negative myths that have surrounded wolves for centuries.

“I think it’s kind of an embarrassment for the studio and the producers and writers and actors,” Paquet says. “It’s such a blatant misrepresentation of reality. Unfortunately, though, there are consequences that are pretty negative for wolves.”

Portraying wolves as manhunters creates unnecessary antipathy and fear, he says. In the long term that can mean people are less accepting of wolves and may even lead to people killing them.

The very idea that wolves would stalk humans, says Canmore’s Gunther Bloch, a canid behaviour expert who has studied wolves for two decades, has no basis in reality.

“It would be extremely exceptional behaviour, and only if they didn’t have a food resource – which in itself would be rare,” Bloch says.

Wolves are opportunistic eaters whose food choices are dictated by availability and habitat. A wolf living in the northern Canadian tundra will hunt migrating caribou. In the Rockies, wolves eat deer, elk, bighorn sheep and snowshoe hares, and snack on mice and voles. In the Arctic, they hunt muskox. A West Coast wolf might feast on running salmon for several weeks.

Given the opportunity, however, wolves will also help themselves to the offerings of an urban garbage dump.

While a rabid or food-conditioned wolf might on very rare occasions lose its fear of humans and attack, a person who finds himself close to a wolf’s food source – even a kill – should not expect a fight.

“They would bark an alarm bark, a warning,” Bloch says. “They wouldn’t attack; in the end, they would run away. They would figure out how to get the pups out of there.”

For the most part, Bloch adds, wolves are very intelligent and have become well conditioned over thousands of years to fear humans who have so often – and successfully – persecuted them.

Since the 1950s, wolves have enjoyed a period of recovery from widespread “control” efforts, the result of prejudices that arrived in North America with the first Europeans. But, while attitudes have changed, in some places where the population had recovered, wolves are again in jeopardy and being targeted.

Wolves have long suffered from misconceptions, including the idea they operate exclusively by pack rules.

For the first five or so months after a litter of pups is born in April, the parent wolves individually hunt small prey, bringing meals back to the den to feed their pups. Then, once the pups have grown, they assemble as hunting groups.

Another misconception people have about wolves, Bloch says, is that wolf behaviour is restricted to hierarchy and status.

“To say that wolves congregate in a pack suggests hierarchy, when the reality is a family-type situation – mother and father, pups and older pups helping look after younger ones, functioning as babysitters,” he says. “Wolves are very close. If a member is injured, they will feed it until it is well again. There are a lot of emotional things going on.”

No one thing in the ecosystem is essential, but, as apex and summit predators, wolves interact with and influence a suite of other species, Paquet says. By extension, their presence has a profound effect on the ecosystem, as their behaviour affects not just the balance between predator and prey but also the plants their prey feed on.

They can also have a positive influence on humans.

“Nature and the wildlife it contains provide physical, emotional and intellectual benefits to people,” Paquet says. “The beauty and symbolic nature of large carnivores inspires many people. As a result, animals such as bears, tigers and wolves often form the foci of literature, poems, paintings, sculptures and dance.”

Wolves figure prominently in First Nations’ cultures, but urban people too can develop strong emotional attachments to large carnivores.

Few might ever see a polar bear or grizzly in the wild, but they want these animals to exist, not just for themselves, but also so their children or grandchildren might have an opportunity to see them in their natural habitat.

Large carnivores, including wolves, top the list of species people hope to catch a glimpse of when they engage in wilderness-based recreation, which can translate into people spending money to travel for such opportunities.

Unfortunately, though, Paquet says, some people harbour the attitude that wolves as predators are in competition with – and a threat to – humans.

In the case of ranchers, farmers and hunters, the potential for wolves to physically harm a person is very rare, but the competition aspect is real.

And the growth of the human population and subsequent encroachment on wolf habitat makes conflicts inevitable.

“Humans tend to push out other species,” Paquet says.

“That, in my view, has been one of the great mistakes of the conservation movement. All these years we’ve asked for tolerance, when all along we should have been asking for acceptance.”

By Chris Genovali, Paul Paquet and Chris Darimont

In western Canada, wolves are routinely, baselessly and contemptuously blamed for the demise of everything from marmots to mountain caribou. Given that attitude, we at Raincoast Conservation Foundation are appalled, though not surprised, by Canada’s proposed strategy to recover dwindling populations of boreal forest caribou in northern Alberta’s tar sands. Essentially, the plan favours the destruction of wolves over any consequential protection, enhancement, or expansion of caribou habitat (“Federal recovery plan for caribou suggests thousands of wolves stand to die,” Winnipeg Free Press, September 12, 2011).

To read the full article please visit The Huffington Post website.

by Paul Paquet

Guardian.co.uk,  Saturday 17   September 2011

Wolves are routinely, baselessly and contemptuously blamed for the demise of everything from marmots to mountain caribou in western Canada. Given that attitude, we at Raincoast Conservation Foundation are appalled, though not surprised, by Canada’s proposed strategy to “recover” dwindling populations of boreal forest caribou in northern Alberta’s tar sands territory. Essentially, the plan favours the destruction of wolves over any consequential protection, enhancement or expansion of caribou habitat.

Clearly, the caribou recovery strategy is not based on ecological principles or available science. Rather, it represents an ideology on the part of advocates for industrial exploitation of our environment, which subsumes all other principles to economic growth, always at the expense of ecological integrity. Owing to the breadth of the human niche, which continues to expand via technological progress, the human economy grows at the competitive exclusion of nonhuman species in the aggregate. The real cost of Alberta’s tar sands development, which includes the potential transport of oil by Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines is being borne by wolves, caribou and other wild species.

Consistent with Canada’s now well-deserved reputation as an environmental laggard, the caribou recovery strategy evolved over several years and many politicised iterations, carefully massaged by government pen pushers and elected officials who did their very best to ignore and obscure the advice of consulting biologists and ecologists. So, the government should quit implying that the consultation approach provides a scientifically credible basis for decisions. Apparently, scientists can lead federal Environment Minister Peter Kent to information, but they cannot make him think.

Egged on by a rapacious oil industry, the federal government has chosen to scapegoat wolves for the decline of boreal caribou in a morally and scientifically bankrupt attempt to protect Canada’s industrial sacred cow: the tar sands.

To read the rest of this article please visit The Guardian website.

B.C.’s Open Season On Wolves: Ranchers Relieved But Critics Rankled By Suspect Science

The Chronicle Herald

 B.C. wolf hunt raises hackles 

The Guardian – PEI

 Ranchers relieved but critics rankled by B.C.’s open season on wolves

News 1130 Radio

 BC’s open season on wolves has supporters and critics

Sympatico.ca News

 Ranchers relieved, critics rankled by open season on wolves

Metro U.S.

 B.C. Interior wolf hunt raises hackles

Penticton Herald

 Ranchers relieved but critics rankled by B.C.’s open season on wolves

CTV News

 Critics rankled by B.C.’s open season on wolves

By Misty MacDuffee and Chris Genovali

BC’s coastal grizzlies often have a hard time securing their life requisites, as humans interfere with their day-to-day existence.

Grizzlies face a myriad of threats, from the degradation of their habitat through industrial forestry to their direct killing via trophy hunting. They also face fierce competition for their most important food source, wild salmon, from commercial and sport fisheries. That competition may have gotten more extreme this summer, as BC’s north coast commercial salmon fishermen have discarded over 20 per cent of their catch, including 1.4 million pounds of chum salmon. Many of these fish are from stocks that fisheries scientists have described as “conservation concern.”

Most of the discarded fish are not expected to survive because salmon hauled up in nets and onto decks need careful handling to be released back to the water unharmed. But in competitive fisheries with short time limits, careful release of unwanted salmon puts fishermen at a disadvantage.  This disincentive means tens of thousands of salmon die from stress and injury, losing their one chance to spawn after returning from the Pacific Ocean. One-half of these chum discards (335 metric tons) came from areas in and around the Great Bear Rainforest.

There are several problems with fisheries that discard “bycatch” in the manner described above. The abundance of many stocks of chum salmon on the central and north coast is too low to withstand significant fishing pressure, so there is a conservation concern.  Secondly, the discarded chum could have fed bears, eagles, wolves, and dozens of other wildlife species in our coastal rivers. Specifically, there are growing concerns over the impact that low salmon abundance has on coastal grizzlies, other wildlife that rely on salmon, and the healthy functioning of salmon-dependent ecosystems.

The massive amounts of nutrients and energy that salmon bring back to BC’s watersheds every year can be likened to the wildebeest migrations of the Serengeti.  Similar to their African ungulate counterparts, spawning salmon provide an essential seasonal food to many species.  For coastal grizzlies, the health of individuals, the number of cubs per female, and population densities are all strongly related to the consumption of salmon. Grizzlies have smaller and less frequent litters in lean times. Given that chum used to provide a high percentage of salmon to these bears, its decline could mean fewer bears and less resilient populations over time.

Bears also drive productivity within coastal streams and forests by transferring salmon carcasses from streams to the forest floor.  They are riparian gardeners; providing nutrients and energy to stream bank food webs, including insects, birds, mammals and other fish.  In terms of nutrients, 335 metric tons of discarded chum salmon translates to 9 metric tons of nitrogen and 1 metric ton of phosphorous, 80 per cent of which would have been of delivered by bears.

The economic value of spawning salmon is significant and undeniable. The rising popularity of wildlife ecotourism suggests that salmon may be worth more to coastal economies alive than dead. Wildlife ecotourism has grown impressively in the past 20 years. The number of operations bringing tourists to see BC’s coastal bears has more than quadrupled since the 1990s and local First Nations have been an important component of this growth. However, this promising economic activity requires abundant salmon populations for bears and other wildlife drawn to fall streams.

Changing the way we fish for salmon could significantly reduce impacts to stocks of concern, like chum salmon in the Great Bear Rainforest. This could be achieved by moving fisheries away from “mixed-stock” areas where it is impossible to target strong stocks while avoiding weak ones, by employing proven selective fishing techniques, and by transitioning to quota-based fisheries.

Misty MacDuffee is a biologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation. Chris Genovali is Raincoast’s executive director.

By DENE MOORE The Canadian Press
Sun, Sep 4

100 MILE HOUSE, B.C. — Hunted to near-extinction in North America by the 1950s, the British Columbia wolf population has long since rebounded.

Now, this secretive nocturnal predator finds itself in the glare of the public eye once again after the provincial government lifted hunting restrictions on wolves in a region of the province.

Ranchers in the Cariboo region say they’re relieved that they’ll be able to hunt and trap wolves preying on their cattle, but critics say the open season is bad management based on poor science…Paul Paquet, a biologist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, said the ministry doesn’t even have the information it would need to make that decision.

“What they’re basing it on is entirely anecdotal,” said Paquet, an adjunct professor in the faculty of environmental design at the University of Calgary.

To read the full article please visit the Chronicle Herald website.

Island Tides Sept 8, 2011

By Misty MacDuffee and Chris Genovali

The Huffington Post

100 MILE HOUSE,  B.C. – Hunted to near-extinction in North America by the 1950s, the British Columbia wolf population has long since rebounded.  Now, this secretive nocturnal predator finds itself in the glare of the public eye once again after the provincial government lifted hunting restrictions on wolves in a region of the province.

Ranchers in the Cariboo region say they’re relieved that they’ll be able to hunt and trap wolves preying on their cattle, but critics say the open season is bad management based on poor science.

Read the full article at Huffington Post

Click here for the pdf version BC’s Open Season on Wolves- Huff Post

Cougar trackers, using specially trained dogs, bushwhacked through dense, temperate rainforest Wednesday in search of the animal that attacked an 18-month old boy this week.

“We’ve done an extensive search. Unfortunately, as yet, we haven’t been able to find the cat,” said Dani Thompson, one of the search leaders, said from Kennedy Lake in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve…

Monday’s attack is extremely rare in the national park and Parks Canada takes the incident very seriously, she said. Protection of the public is one of its key mandates.

However, Paul Paquet, senior scientist for Raincoast Conservation Foundation, who has a doctorate in zoology, said protection of wildlife is also in the mandate.

Paquet, who co-authored a major report on cougars for the B.C. government, said his research has shown that it is unlikely that trackers can reliably determine if they have caught the targeted cougar.

To read the rest of this article please visit the Victoria Times Colonist website.

Photo from Raincoast remote camera

By Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist August 31, 2011

Every spring and fall, William Housty walks the banks of the Koeye River, spreading a concoction with a smell almost guaranteed to make humans retch.

But the mixture of salmon oil, boiled down beaver juice, skunk essence and berries is irresistible to grizzly bears and, as the animals are drawn to the pungent mixture, snags of their hair, caught on strategically-placed barbed wire, tell their stories.

For six years, members of Heiltsuk First Nation have set up bear hair snare stations to help them learn more about the habits of grizzlies that share their vast traditional territory in the Great Bear Rainforest near Bella Bella and, helped by data-sharing with Victoria-based Raincoast Conservation Foundation, a detailed scientific analysis of the bears’ diet and movements is being compiled.

To read the rest of this article please visit the Victoria Times Colonist website.

The B.C. government justifies an open-season policy on wolves in the Cariboo region by saying their numbers are at a historic high and they are having a ”significant” impact on livestock.

But official government payments to ranchers for predator-killed livestock tell a different story, suggesting the problem is in fact getting better, not worse.

There were 78 verified livestock losses to predators on Crown land across the province last year – the lowest in four years – for which the government paid out $32,931 in compensation. The province estimates 150,000 cattle (cows, not including calves) graze on Crown range land across B.C.

Ministry of Agriculture statistics provided at The Vancouver Sun’s request show those compensation numbers were down from 93 verified losses in 2009-10 costing $38,292 in compensation, 98 losses in 2008-09 worth $33,440, and 84 verified losses in 2007-08 worth $33,425.

The province cannot accurately say how many predator-compensation claims came from the Cariboo, but estimates that at least 40 per cent of the payouts last year went to ranchers in that region, said Vivian Thomas, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations.

Paul Paquet, an associate professor of environmental design and adjunct professor of biology at the University of Calgary (and senior scientist for Raincoast Conservation Foundation) who has studied wolves for 40 years in Asia, Europe and North America, including extensively on the B.C. coast, argued there is a vast discrepancy between government policy and solid information on wolves…

To read the rest of this article please visit the Vancouver Sun website.

The August 2011 issue of National Geographic features incredible images from photographer Paul Nicklen in two important stories by Bruce Barcott; Spirit Bear: The wildest place in America and Pipeline Through Paradise.  Paul and his colleagues from the International League of Conservation Photographers cover a proposed plan to build an oil pipeline through the Land of the Spirit Bear in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest.

Read the stories and see all the images at:

• Nationalgeographic.com- Pipeline through Paradise
• Nationalgeographic.com- Spirit Bear
• Decorate your desk top with downloadable spirit bears from Nat Geo images

In a forest dominated by second-growth trees, a young bear settles into a mossy day bed at the foot of a giant, old-growth western red cedar. Bears use such day beds to rest and sleep after a meal. ©Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

With a population of 400 to as many as a thousand, the spirit bear may owe its survival to the protective traditions of the First Nations, who never hunted the animals or spoke of them to fur trappers. ©Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

Two adult males tussle over a prime fishing spot in a river. "Bear scraps are rare events," says Doug Neasloss, a Kitasoo/Xai'xais wildlife guide. "There's a high potential for injury, so they avoid conflict if they can." ©Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

Editor’s note: This post is part of a four-part series that Anne Casselman, a freelance writer and regular contributor to Scientific American, reported in early June during a rare opportunity to conduct field reporting on grizzly bears in Heiltsuk First Nation traditional territory in British Columbia. For more on her experience there, see this slide show and this story on ongoing research to gauge the nutritional impact of poor salmon runs on grizzly bears.

HEILTSUK TRADITIONAL TERRITORY, British Columbia—I land in the Great Bear Rainforest to hit the ground running to report a series of stories for Scientific American on local research on grizzly bears. The Jet Ranger Bell 206 helicopter that myself and photographer Dean Azim have hitched a ride on from Campbell River, an hour and a half flight from Vancouver Island over to Shearwater on the Central Coast, has barely landed on the lawn at the Shearwater dock before the Raincoast Conservation field crew have trundled our gear into their 17-foot boat, Wyatt, to begin the day’s work: finish the last round of sampling and dismantle grizzly bear hair-snagging stations for the year (Raincoast is singular as a BC environment non-profit in its remit to conduct conservation science research and publish it in peer-reviewed journals).

To read the rest of this article, please visit the Scientific American website.

By Anne Casselman

HEILTSUK TRADITIONAL TERRITORY, British Columbia—”Remember, if she charges, don’t run,” Doug Brown, researcher and field station manager for Raincoast Conservation Foundation and member of the Heiltsuk First Nation, who tells me as we climb out of the boat at the head of one of the countless inlets found in the of the Heiltsuk Traditional Territory along British Columbia’s central coast.

It’s June and the early morning summer sun rapidly scales over the steep slopes flanking the inlet. Several hundred meters away a grizzly mother is grazing along the edge of the estuary with her two and a half-year old cubs. “Cub,” however, is a misnomer in this instance. These are three-year-olds, large beasts in their own right. Through my binoculars I see the mother lift her broad head to sniff the wind. The muscles powering her lumbering 135-kilogram-plus body ripples still. “So how far away does the bear need to be for the bear spray to work?” I ask Doug. “Ten feet,” he replies. I picture just how large this grizzly would be that close—and how fast she would close that distance. “Wow,” I mutter. Doug replies: “Yeah, that’s why I carry two canisters.”

This mother’s triplets are likely the fruit of a banner salmon run four years ago, a rarity, given the poor runs seen here since 2003. Like so many marine and terrestrial animals of the Great Bear Rainforest—roughly defined as the north-central coast of British Columbia—the grizzlies here rely on salmon in their diet to sustain their life cycles, which may be a problem because the salmon aren’t doing so well. “All of us are governed by the same ecological currencies, and the currency here is salmon,” Chris Darimont, chief scientist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation (RCF) and conservation ecologist at University of California, Santa Cruz, says. “When the wealth of salmon goes away there’s poverty for the people here, and also ecological poverty.”

To read the rest of this article, please visit the Scientific American website.

by Larry Pynn Vancouver Sun

The B.C. government has declared open season on wolves in the Cariboo region to benefit cattle ranchers, a move that critics contend is unjustifiable and based on politics, not science.Under new wildlife regulations, there is no closed season and no bag limit on hunting wolves in 10 management units in the Cariboo region, which ranges to 100 Mile House, Williams Lake, Quesnel and the Chilcotin.

Read the full story at:

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/declares+open+season+wolves+Chilcotin/5196188/story.html#ixzz1U5SHGp5L